Sponsor

It’s a pleasure to welcome all competitors and spectators back to Cockermouth and M-Sport for what is sure to be another fantastic event from the organising team. Year after year they deliver the highest standard across some of the best stages in the country; and I have no doubt that this year will see them produce more of the same.

Parc Ferme will once again be held at M-Sport which proved a great success last year with some of the village’s smallest residents getting chance to wave the cars on their way – inspiring their imaginations and creating some new and enthusiastic rally fans.

This year will also see the introduction of night stages on Friday evening and a later start on Saturday morning – adding to the challenge and creating some fantastic opportunities to watch and partake in some classic British rallying.

At time of writing, staff at M-Sport are pulling together the final details for a new and exciting opportunity of our own as we prepare to make our debut at Rally Dakar. Our first experience of this legendary event be an exploratory one, but one that we are all very much looking forward to – learning and discovering as much as we can before work starts on an exciting new rally raid project alongside our long-term partners at Ford Performance.

In the FIA World Rally Championship it was a shame to see Ott Tänak leave the team at the end of 2023, but two victories in Sweden and Chile proved that the speed and potential was there; and we are now working on a long-term plan to develop further young talent that will safeguard the future of the championship as well as our own presence at the sport’s highest level.

But one of our greatest success stories last year was the development of the Ford Fiesta Rally2 and the increased performance and reliability provided by a series of upgrades over the course of the year – culminating with a British Rally Championship title and a dominant WRC2 victory at the Central European Rally.

It was fantastic to see our most successful global rally car back at the top of the timesheets, and I hope to see our customers replicate that success as the upgrades roll out in early 2024.

I am sure that you will all enjoy this edition of the Malcolm Wilson Rally and all that Cockermouth and the surrounding Lake District has to offer.

Please help us maintain good relations with the surrounding villages by keeping noise to a minimum where possible; and I wish everyone a safe and successful rally, and hope to be out in the forests watching the action unfold.

Malcolm Wilson OBE